Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality
Year: 2024
DOI:
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“Progress,” Ecofeminism, and the Culture of Slow
Mary Caputi
ABSTRACT:
Ecofeminism has many iterations, yet all versions of it share common ground with the slow movement as embodied in Slow Food. Like Slow Food, ecofeminism demands an end to the anthropocentric activities that sustain neoliberalism’s economic profit and the North/South relationship which encourages conspicuous consumption in the North while harming the South. It correctly identifies the need to embrace a changed relationship with the earth, our farming methods, and the manner in which we feed ourselves. Indeed, one could say that ecofeminism and Slow Food have been working along parallel lines for many years as seen in the writings and activism of Vandana Shiva, Maria Mies, and Carlo Petrini. This essay draws upon the work of all three authors with a view toward critiquing our understanding of “progress” while promoting the agrarian, artisanal practices so overshadowed by contemporary technology. Importantly, the essay also engages the work of critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin whose writings probe the origins of a philosophy built on the human dominance of nature and a mistaken reading of “progress.” The texts that are centrally important to this essay are Shiva’s Earth Democracy, Shiva and Mies’ Ecofeminism, Petrini’s Food & Freedom, and Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.
keywords: ecofeminism, slow movement, critical theory